3 Dead, Including Shooter, in 'Racially Motivated' Florida Dollar General Store Shooting, Sheriff Says

Photo:AP Photo/John Raoux

AP Photo/John Raoux

A shooting inside a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, Saturday left three dead, including the shooter.

A spokesperson for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office confirmed to PEOPLE in a statement that “the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting which resulted in three people killed.”

Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waterssaid in a press conference Saturdaythat the city “suffered the loss of three precious lives at the hands of an active shooter” around 1 p.m. that afternoon.

Waters said the shooter — who has not yet been officially identified, but was confirmed to be a White male in his 20s believed to have lived with his parents in Clay County — wore a tactical vest and was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and a Glock.

“The shooter killed three people before turning the gun on himself, taking his own life other than the three individuals killed and the shooter himself,” Waters said, adding that no one else was injured and that the shooter acted alone.

While police are not releasing the identities of the victims, Waters confirmed that two men and one woman are among the deceased and are all Black.

Waters said that the Jacksonville Clay County Sheriff’s Office learned that the shooter wrote several manifestos, “one to his parents, one to the media, and one to federal agents.”

“Portions of these manifestos detailed the shooter’s disgusting ideology of hate, plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people. He wanted to kill ‘n—-rs.’ That is the one and only time I’ll use that word," Waters said.

“This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history, and the loss of life is tragic,” he stated. “The hate that motivated the shooter’s killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak. There’s no place for hate in our community, and this is not Jacksonville.”

“Our Jacksonville community collectively cries tonight to the victims and victims’ families,” Waters continued. “Our thoughts and prayers are with you now and will remain with you. Please know that in the face of this tragedy, this agency in our city stands with you, we stand united and resolved in our commitment to accountability. We stand united with each other.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Mayor Donna Deegan told reporters: “I’m heartbroken, obviously. This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up and there were so many people out today obviously grieving, upset. It’s just something that should not and must not continue to happen in our community.”

“We must do everything that we can to dissuade this type of hate,” Deegan said. “And so I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating this is for all of us because we’ve seen it too much.”

Deegan added that Saturday’s shooting at the Dollar General store occurred on the anniversary of theJacksonville Landing shooting in 2018.

“I believe that was also indicated in the manifesto that he was aware of that and perhaps chose this date in alignment with that,” Deegan said. “The sheriff said that this was a hate filled crime. And we just shouldn’t have that kind of hate in Jacksonville.”

source: people.com